This article lists free image, video and illustration sources you can use on a blog.
The short answer: Unsplash and Pixabay allow commercial use with no attribution. Freepik’s free tier allows commercial use but requires a credit.
▼Licence terms compared (September 2026)
| Site | Commercial use | Attribution |
|---|---|---|
| Unsplash | Allowed | Not required |
| Pixabay | Allowed | Not required |
| Pexels | Allowed | Not required |
| Freepik (free tier) | Allowed | Required |
“Free” and “no conditions attached” are not the same thing. Some of these are free to use but come with obligations. Freepik in particular becomes a licence violation the moment you forget the credit, so check each site’s licence page before you rely on it.
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Free photo sites
Unsplash
Unsplash carries polished, editorial-looking photography. Everything is free for commercial use, and the licence explicitly says attribution is appreciated but not required.
Pexels
Pexels has a large, well-indexed library of photos and video. Search is strong, which matters when you need something specific rather than something pretty.
Pixabay
Pixabay covers photos, video and illustrations under a single clearly written licence. Its search filters by colour and resolution as well as keyword.
Free video sites
Videezy
Videezy offers a broad set of free stock clips across most common themes. Some clips require attribution, so check the individual item.
Coverr
Coverr focuses on short background videos, which is exactly what most site headers need.
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Free illustration sites
Freepik
Freepik has a very large illustration library and an online editor for adapting what you download.
On the free plan, a credit is mandatory. You need something like “Designed by Freepik” on the page where the asset appears. A paid plan removes that requirement. This is the one condition on this list that differs from the others, so it is worth a second look.
Openclipart
Openclipart is a public-domain clipart library. Most assets are vectors, so they scale without losing quality.
Before you use an asset
Licences change. Having checked once is not the same as knowing the current terms.
Free asset sites revise their licences as their business models shift. For anything you expect to use for years, note the terms at the point of download so you can check them again later.
Even where commercial use is permitted, these are usually prohibited everywhere:
- Redistributing or reselling the asset itself
- Using a photo of a person to imply they endorse something
- Registering it as a trademark or logo
Photographs of people need particular care. Copyright and personality rights are separate: a licence that clears the former says nothing about the latter. Using a stock portrait on an article about a sensitive subject is a risk regardless of the licence.
Once you have the images, compression is covered in building an image compression GUI in Python, with measured figures for when to use JPEG and when to reduce a PNG’s palette.
Fonts carry the same kind of licence variation. Installing multiple fonts at once on a Mac covers getting them onto the machine.
